Thursday, September 13, 2012

Few things in life compare to the joys of a nice piece of Cheese, do they?
One day before the dreaded twenty-four hours that marks the date that I have spent two years short of a half century on this miserable planet, the local Co-op suddenly had not one, but nearly a dozen of neatly shrink-wrapped samples of my favourite Cheese on the planet.Blue Stilton!
It's as rare as hen's teeth where I live, sadly, but oh the memories.
Almost too good for me, but who cares!

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Ahhh! The perfect week-day meal and apparently one half of the 'Glimmer Twins' favourite dish.
Celebrated in song by talents no less diverse than Peter Sellers & Sophia Loren and Radiohead.
To slightly paraphrase Todd Rundgren:: "The problem with food today is that everybody is too busy talking and not eating." So Let's get cooking, dammit!

I used Tofurky's excellent approximation of Bratwurst this time, as the Co-Op was out of their Kielbasa which I usually buy for this dish. Both work quite well, however. If you're in the UK, 'Linda Mac' stuff is equally useful.

Now, on to the gravy!

I'm not a fan of staying in the kitchen all day. Cooking is more of a means to an end in my book, so Bisto is about the only way to go. It costs a fortune if you purchase it online from British expat grocers (Cheap, if you're lucky enough to have a Poundland nearby), but, unless you like gravy on everything the 500g. size lasts a very long time. Four heaping teaspoons of it and 10 oz./280ml. of boiling water and you've got loads of simulated beefy viscous liquid.

You'll need an onion or two sizzling in the pan.

I added the onion before the sausage, which is the opposite of how you would do this with a packet of Wall's, obviously. Veg sausages take far less time to cook and since these are going into the microwave..(Shock! Horror!) really all you need to do is brown them so that they'll have that all important 'snap'.
The onions should be carmelised just a bit, so they create a nice hit of sweetness V. the salty savoury tastes of the gravy and sausages.

I won't say much about the mash as I don't like to bother with boiling, mashing and otherwise mutilating poor innocent potatoes. I let the nice folks who work in a factory, somewhere in deepest, darkest Idaho do that for me. (Hi! The name's Bob. I live in a trailer-park. I like Pabst Blue Ribbon.)

Once the onion and sausages are nicely browned and the 'Spuddo Instant' is ready, it's time to put the whole thing together.

"Now that's a hell of a lot of gravy!" I hear you scream. Part of that is the Archimaedes' effect from the blob of processed, re-constituted potato. The other part is that I probably got a little too enthusiastic with the Bisto. I love gravy, so there!
My one kowtow to tradition, here, is that the gravy always and I do mean ALWAYS goes on the bottom of the baking dish. You can always splash it over the top with your fork, if you like.

Next, we stick it in the microwave for approximately seven minutes and it looks like this:

It looks a lot more elegant when it's subsequently served on a plate, but since I'm only cooking for myself this time and I'm a total slob, this will do nicely, thank you very (expletive deleted) ing much!
A quick lashing of HP, A-1, Daddies' on top and there you have it.
I'm tuckin' in!